Posted on 12/18/2004 10:54:20 AM PST by forest
That is the flip side of restricting the power of the Federal Government.
I'm not so sure that the Second Amendment in any way restricts the States from disarming their respective populations.
If the Courts hold that to be true, we will see the progressive Balkanization of the US accelerate into enclaves - along State boundaries - of those who want freedom and individual rights, and those who want Government regulation of bedtime (not to mention firearms ownership)
They may still run out of chalk. It just won't be your outline that they use it up on.
The "collective rights" theory goes back a lot farther than Tricky Dick's Presidency. A 1905 case in Kansas, City of Salina v. Blaksley, 72 Kan. 230 (1905) seems to be one of the earlier incarnations of it.
It's also known as a "Negative Income Tax". We have it today in the form of the "Earned Income Tax Credit".
It's from a letter to his nephew. It's very well verified. I looked it up in a hard-copy version of the earlier edition of the same collection of Jefferson's papers. There are some benefits to a wife that is a college professor, including access to a pretty decent library for a small college.
He probably did, which is why he's in California. Guess we should just have gotten a rope!
Not only do I remember them, I was a victim of them. The military had just gotten a signifigant pay structure overall, which raised the pay of lower ranking folks, both officer and enlisted, relative to the higher ranking folks in each category. This was an attempt to encourage people to join voluntarily as part of the move to an all volunter military. I went to AFROTC field training that summer, being paid at the rate of an E-1, basic trainee. Since Nixon froze that change that had been passed by Congress, I ended up netting about $1.99 (well it seemed like about that much) for six weeks after deductions for laundry (read Starch and Press) services and other stuff.
Originally it may not have. However the whole purpose of the 14th amendment was to keep states from infringing upon the rights of their citizens. During the debates and discussions surrounding the passage of the 14th amendment, the practice of the southern states of disarming their black citizens was mentioned as a prime example of the sort of thing the amendment was meant to prevent. Now the courts have lawyer-ed that direct protection away, saying that the "privileges and immunities" clause of the fourteenth amendment protects only those P&Is that are *granted* by the federal constitution, rather than those *protected* by it. Since they argued that the right to keep and bear arms, along with the rights of free speech and assembly existed prior to the Constitution, they are not protected from state infringement by the 14th amendment. Which is of course horse pucky. Unfortunately, it's also the current state of judicial precedent.
Relying on someone else for protection limits your freedom from them. As soon as you give that up, they're calling the shots.
That's true. Our gun amendment wording is self-contradicting on the point of concealed carry. Apparently some saw the need to remedy that contradiction by passing the 'shall issue.'
Even without it, few would argue against some of the holster showing was sufficient for open carry anyway. All the concealed carry did was cover up that last inch of holster.
I hear ya! ;>
"The provision in section 4 of the Bill of Rights "that the people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security" refers to the people as a collective body."
However, the above sentence from the opinion begs the question of the nature of a "collective body" and how government is to treat rights that belong to "the people". If a "Right" can become "collective" and in doing so becomes regulated, the Right can apparently become denied. If 3rd. Amendment Rights regarding unreasonable searches without a sworn warrant were to be considered "collective", how would collectivity effect that right? Just who belongs to the collective? If it is all the people, than the right applies to each and every individual and the 3rd Amendment is therefore, in fact, an "Individual Right". And so would be the 2nd. Amendment.
At the time this opinion was written in 1905, the word "collective" was just a 50¢ legal word for "community". The concept that persons would be devalued under the concepts of "the collective" that emerged later from Marxism/socialism had not reared its ugly head and the Kansas Supreme Court was unaware of the dangers of going down a truly collective road.
"Collective Rights" is an oxymoron. It's an abstract painting of something that does not exist. Just because the words "collective' and "Rights can be arranged next to one another in a sentence, doesn't give them meaning. Quite the contrary, it leads one to think that the author of those words doesn't.
Again, thanks for the link to this Kansas court decision. I saved it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.